Prose Books

Reviewed by AJ Cooper for Reader Views (1/07)

"Things Invisible to See" is about a number of different families and people. It is also about spirits and death. The main focus revolves around Ben and Clare. Ben is on a golf course with his friends goofing off and they decide to hit baseballs towards the river. The ball is pitched to Ben and he hits it so hard it goes across the river and strikes someone. All of the boys hear the scream and take off without determining who they hit. Ben searches the local paper in the hopes of discovering who he hit. A number of days later he does locate a small article about the girl his baseball hit. He is wrought with guilt and works his way into her life and the life of her family. Clare is unable to walk due to the accident and it cannot be determined why she cannot walk. Clare has a spirit that visits her and takes her to see different images and people away from her body. There are also others in the book who are able to see and communicate with the spirit world.

The book goes on and on with each chapter describing different families. It is very disjointed to me and not really that interesting. It is as if parts from this book are taken from many other stories and then added together at the last minute. I found this book very hard to read. I felt I had been reading this book all of my life and could never get to or find the ending. There are small parts of the book that I found interesting. But over all I would not read this book again and I am not sure who might enjoy it. I am sure there must be a group of people who may enjoy "Things Invisible to See," but I could not take a guess as to who that might be.

This book turned my teenaged niece from a non-reader to an avid reader. Can there be a better tribute to any book?

Admittedly, I'm from Ann Arbor. But Willard is quite magical in capturing the feel of (what was then, before WWII) a smallish Michigan city, from an utterly unexpected angle. The book is one of the most successful examples of magical realism I have ever encountered, and Willard's prose itself is enchanting. I've read this book (and its successor, Sister Water, now out of print) many times, always with fondness, and I recommend it to anyone else who wants a thoroughly good read.

I just ordered a hardback copy of this book, because my paperback is falling apart from so many readings! I was not surprised to see so many other reviews for a book so old; because this is a wonderful, magical book. I picked it up at a used book-store, even though it looked to be a "fantasy", which I don't read. But this novel cannot be wedged into any genre. If you love baseball, are interested in (or lived through) WWII, grew up in S. Michigan, went to U. of Michigan, or believe in miracles, this book WILL resonate with you. And you may love it without any of those points of resonance! It also has those subtle references that make re-reading worthwhile. Example: a scene set in early December 1941, where Death-a little man who is a main character in the book-attends a seance several days early, because "he has important business on Sunday". It was my third reading before I followed the book's timeline well enough to realize Death had to be at Pearl Harbor that Sunday.

This book leaves you with not just a good feeling, but a tingle of wonder--like maybe there are always little miracles afoot in the world???? If Nancy Willard only had one "big novel" in her, I'm glad its this one; but I'd love to see more from her.

This is a wonderful book. I teach it in a class on "Baseball, Literature, and American Culture." Like all good baseball books, it's not really about baseball. It's really about love, war, families, race, and other universals. Willard is a gifted writer who understands that adults like stories with spirits and ghosts and magic and whimsy as much as kids. The baseball in it is well-rendered. Willard is a sophisticated fan (Tigers): she knows whereof she speaks. It's a shame it's not in print as there are so few works of baseball fiction by women. This the best I know of. I photocopy 50 copies for my class (with permission). It works. Students like it, especially the more literary types.

This is a magnificent work, weaving the history of the Phillies and A's through the socioeconomic changes in Philadelphia during the tenure of Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium. Although I am not a Phila. native nor am I a Phillies fan, I found this work fascinating, and could not put it down! An absolute must for any library of information about historic stadiums - WELL WORTH THE MONEY AND TIME!

The author did an outstanding job in writing this book. I've visited Philly several times on business. The nature of my business took me to the distressed areas of North & West Philadelphia. I visited 21st & Lehigh where Shibe Park formerly took & now has the church covering part of the grounds. I only wished that I could have seen the park during its existence. I had the opportunity visiting Philly on a weekend pass when some Army buddies back in 1968, but unfortunately we didn't think about attending a ballgame at Connie Mack Stadium. My loss.

If your a native Philadelphian, Phillies, or a baseball fan you must read this book. It talks about not only the A's, but the Phillies, and even the Eagles and their ownerss. It talks extensively about the immediate neighborhood, North Philly, and the problems that both Connie Mack & the Carpenters faced owning the stadium. I didn't think the book would be as near as enjoyable as it proved to be. The Amazon reader's star ratings are usually grossly over graded, but not in this instance.

The best baseball books earn their sentiment. Bruce Kulkick's book does just that. It is a grown-up story written with passion and anger and affection. The author knows the game, knows that IT IS a game and does a balancing act that should satisfy fans of Big League ball, 20th century American history, and any city planning student around. Baseball is said to be a perfect game in its dimensions; if the distance between bases were any shorter, far too many hits would be produced, if the distance were longer, nobody would ever get aboard. Kuklick is a writer who carries off the same tricky balance. Elegaic and important.

THIS BOOK GIVES A VERY NOSTALGIC AND DETAILED LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF SHIBE PARK AND THE SURROUNDING NEIGHBORHOOD. MUCH DETAIL AND DRAMA IS GIVEN TO THE EVENTS THAT GRACED THIS GREAT PARK. ALSO COVERED IN DETAIL ARE THE SHORT STAY OF THE EAGLES, THE RIVALTY OF THE A'S AND PHILLIES. THE BUNGLING AND MISMANEGMENT OF THE MACK FAMILY AND OF THE CARPENTERS IS ALSO VERY WELL DOCUMENTED AND WELL DESCRIBED. THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM SURROUNDING THE JOUNEY TO AND FROM SHIBE PARK AND THE DETERIORATING NEIGHBORHOOD ARE ALSO A VERY WELL COVERED PART OF THIS MUST READ NOVEL. I REALLY LOVED THIS BOOK. I HAVE NEVER BEEN TO PHILADELPHIA, BUT THE AUTHOR MAKES THIS HISTORIC PARK INTO A STAPLE IN BASEBALL HISTORY. VERY RECOMMENDED.

University of Pennsylvania historian Bruce Kuklick has written with "To Every Thing a Season" a masterful analysis of the role of the relationship of Major League Baseball (MLB) to the city of Philadelphia and its culture in the twentieth century. He takes as his nexus one of the most significant of the concrete-and-steel stadiums built by various teams in the first part of the century, Shibe Park, home to both the National League Phillies and the American League Athletics--A's for short--for much of its history. Shibe Park, built by Connie Mack and others for $301,000, opened its doors in 1909. It was the home of the Athletics until they departed the city for Kansas City in 1954 and the Phillies between 1938 and 1970 when they moved to Veteran's Stadium.

This is sophisticated history, not the once-over-lightly narratives of many baseball histories. Kuklick emphasizes the interrelations of the A's, the Phillies, and the residents of Philadelphia with Shibe Park as the point of convergence. Connie Mack, the owner of the A's, provides the human face of much of the description in the book and his successes and numerous failings on and off the field give "To Every Thing a Seasons" much of its dramatic power. Mack built two great baseball powerhouses with the A's, the first time in the years surrounding 1910 and again in the years around 1930. In both cases he dismantled those teams and sold the players to other Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises. The Phillies had far fewer good years than the A's, but did manage to win a National League pennant in 1950, and came close in 1964 when a late season collapse allowed the St. Louis Cardinals to take the pennant.

Kuklick does not recite too much of the on-field activities of the Phillies and A's, but instead focuses on the role of Shibe Park, and by extension its occupants, in the life of the Philadelphia. As such "To Every Thing a Season" is quite excellent urban history, and at some level also business and economic and social history, rather than sports or baseball history. Kuklick is correct to conclude, and this very fine book emphasizes it: "Part of the story of Shibe Park is one of proprietorial rapacity, cynicism, and the limitations of even admirable people in an industrial society" (p. 190). Kuklick's epilogue is a superb contemplation of the social function of MLB teams and their home cities, using Philadelphia as a model. It helped generate a shared identity and taught camaraderie and patience and acceptance of the world and its fortunes. In the end, Shibe Park served as a collector of memories for the city, of both good and bad events. It became, over time, the city's equivalent of the family kitchen table.

There is no question but that any reader will learn quite a lot from this book, and I recommend it as the starting point for serious investigation of MLB and its relation to the homes of its various franchises.

In a world where the real Polish Foreign Minister referred to himself often in public as "the one and only Josef Beck," the fictional embassy staff in Argentina are absurdly believable. The author's pain at the renewed partition and immolation of his noble republic by Hitler's blitzkrieg causes him to lash out at Poliosh traditions and honor, which, contrary to Polish expectations, were vastly incapable of achieving the anticipated victory parade by the Polish Hussaria cavalry down Unter der Linden in Berlin. Consequently, he questions the virtues of the patriarchal Fatherland, but the novela ends without resolution of the conflict. The invention of an oh so campy Argentine drag queen as a principal protagonist in the rambling tale with an unlikely passion for younger boys expands the comedic heights of this unique tale. Few sacred cows are left when the dust settles.

Gombrowicz's Trans-atlantyk, a perfect novel in its pure form, still waits to be fully appreciated by the international reading community. When it is ultimately discovered by the English-speaking reader, it could be made into a movie that has never been.... It provides the best material for a 100% Oscar winner... And its sense of humor is a killer!!!

The only novel I have ever turned directly from the last page back to the front page to begin reading again. Laugh-out-loud funny; brilliant; and so unique in the world of literature that it beggars description. Just read it.

Yale University Press did a fine job of promoting Witold Gombrowicz with its anachronistic translation by Carolyn French and Nina Karsov of TRANS-ATLANTYK, published in 1994. The Introduction by Stanislaw Baranczak describes how Witold Gombrowicz arrived in Buenos Aires on August 21, 1939, eleven days before the Nazi invasion of Poland presented Gombrowicz with the fundamental dilemma of human existence in which he refused to take the ocean liner Boleslaw Chobry back to Europe. His new situation obviously called for some literary explanation of how his life had changed since he had been lauded in his homeland as the author of the novel FERDYDURKE. As the Introduction explains, the world had to wait until 1953 for the little book, 122 pages, that captures how events had put Gombrowicz into a situation so intense that TRANS-ATLANTYK was his `Life Line,' to incorporate by reference a great song by Harry Nilsson from a great cartoon story called `The Point.'

"Begun in 1948, it appeared only in 1953, sixteen years after FERDYDURKE. To be sure, Gombrowicz did not spend all of that time chiseling TRANS-ATLANTYK's fine points. During most of the war and postwar years he was reduced to struggling for survival, coping with extreme poverty and wasting his energies on a job as a bank clerk offered to him by a Polish banker in Buenos Aires. According to Gombrowicz, he wrote TRANS-ATLANTYK on his desk at the bank, hiding the manuscript whenever his superior entered the room." (p. xiii).

" . . . this novel, perhaps the most grotesquely fantastic ever written in Polish, is also the most personal and engaging of all Gombrowicz's works of fiction." (p. xiv).

In Poland, "TRANS-ATLANTYK appeared in 1957 and immediately became a modern classic, in spite of the modest printing of ten thousand copies." (p. xx).

On a personal level, Stanislaw Baranczak credits TRANS-ATLANTYK with helping a group of Polish literature majors prepare for their final exam on Marxist political economy in May 1967 by roaring with laughter the night before the exam at lines like, "I'm not so mad as to have any views These Days or not to have them." (p. xxi).

A Note on Pronunciation on page xxviii includes the author's name:

Witold Gombrowicz VEE-told gom-BROH-veetch

Whereupon I commented to my neighbor, and quite loudly so that he there could hear: "I don't like Butter too Buttery, Noodles too Noodly, Millet too Millety and Barley too Barley!" (p. 32).

Cursed that warp of Mankind! Cursed that swine of ours wallowing in mud! Cursed that Slough of ours! Indeed that one who Walked there, with whom I Walked, was no Bull, but a cow! (p. 36).
A Man who, being a Man, fain would not be a Man but after Men chases, and after them Flies, admires, oh, Loves, Heats for them, Lusts for them, Hungers for them, makes up to them, simpers, adulates them, him folks hereabouts give the contemptuous name "puto." Upon seeing those lips, the which although a Man's with woman's rouge bled, I could have no trace of doubt that my lot was to have happen to me a Puto. It was he and I who before all Walked, Walked as in a couple forever coupled! (p. 36).

Gombrowicz's take on the generally painful experience of exile is an artful combination of the particular and the universal. The novel's comic tone seems a historically and culturally specific attack on hackneyed Polish nationalism. Yet Trans-Atlantyk manages to raise greater questions of literature's ability to do justice to 20th-century horrors such as WWII. The translation is a work of art in itself -- for those who can't read Polish (such as myself), you will not be bothered by that fear of a mediated, second-rate experience so common to mediocre translations. To the contrary, the language of this translation is unbelievably rich. Indeed, do not let the richness scare you off -- the style becomes easier to digest as the novella moves forward. Enjoy...

IN MANY OF THE STATEMENTS THAT I READ I SEEN THAT MANY SAID A LOT ABOUT THE WRITTER WELL WE ALL HAVE MANY OPINIONS I PERSONALLY HAVE MY OWN OPINION I THINK IS ONE MY GREAT BOOKS THAT I HAVE TO READ IN MY FREE TIME LIKE SCHOOL OR JUST ABOUT ANYWHERE BUT JUST WANTED TO ADD THAT I LOVE CHALINO AS THE PERSON HE WAS A WHILE BACK WITH HIS MUSIC I ADMIRE HIM AS A FATHER AND I AM IN LOVE WITH HIS SON 4-SHO!!!

Another reviewer pointed out that Quinones' accounts are "researched", and this is true; he's done what he needed to do to find his facts. But I would add that the overwhelming note, for me, is that the man has "been there". I heard about "True Tales" from a reviewer of Elijah Wald's "Narcocorrido", and would now agree with that reviewer that the Quinones piece on Chalino Sanchez tells us a lot more about his world than Wald's book, valuable but a bit touristy, a bit arch, and a bit academic. There is an immediacy in these chapters by Quinones, of grittiness, suffering, delusion, terror, helplessness, of all the qualities of the many Mexicans Quinones met and listened to. His description of the lynching is the most direct, realistic and frightening I've ever read; this can happen anywhere, anytime. These stories are unadorned realities of Mexico and the Border, and the entire world as well.
As Edward Abbey said, of the same country, "this is the real world, muchachos, and you are in it."

It is clear from the book there is more than one Mexico. It's not what you think. The border is a focus but hardly all. Gangs are a focus. The book raises a major question. Is Mexico changing and how?Quinones presents many portraits from gangbanger singer Chalino Sanchez to the dead women of Juarez. Each sketch adds a different and fascinating dimension to a complex perception of what Mexico is. No other book presents that plurality as well. The book is a page turner, a fast paced quick read. It is not, however, superficial but in-depth coverage. It is fascinating.

This book will blow your mind. Quinones is able to totally take you into worlds rarely heard about before. Who knew there was a thriving basketball hotbed in Oaxaca that has been transported to LA? The whole genre of narcocorridos (basically, traditional Mexican "country" [ranchero] music with a gangsta slant) started in LA, too.

The topics of lynchings in rural Mexico, the popularity of telenovelas at home and in Eastern Europe(?) and the religious cult at Neuva Jerusalen are all so fascinating and far beyond anything anyone has probably imagined Mexico to be.

He has an inate ability to dig up and find the most fascinating stories in the most out-of-the-way places yet also show how they often are a microcosmic reflection of how Mexican society operates in general.

The question is: When is Sam Quinones going to compile a Tales 2?

This book is fantastic. I don't often actually buy non-fiction because I usually don't plan to re-read it. This is a rare exception. Quinones is 1st & foremost a great storyteller. You'd hardly notice that it's all true if it weren't for the fact that these tales are simply too good to be fiction. Quinones has a knack for noticing the seemingly invisible. The best example being the tale of Chalino Sanchez (who graces the cover). How could someone who completely misses the U.S. radar of popular culture become a folk hero and single-handedly create a musical genre selling millions of copies of albums in the process & then having at least 1,500 songs written about him? Quinones manages to make it sound perfectly believable. If you're anything like me you'll be mesmerized by these essays.

This was actually my first experience with Doris Lessing, tho I've heard of her for years. Her picture of the So. African experience was quite revealing but I got a little tired of the analysis of those who joined the communist movement. It seems that though she worked as an activist, she never really
'bought' the doctrine, to her credit. But she seems to have a need to over analyse the motives. It seems to me that most of the people were just trying to improve the social ills of the time and were taken in by the communist rhetoric. The writing was good enough to keep me reading even though I wasn't too happy with the her bohemian attitude; abandoning her children, taking successive lovers.... I respect her intellect but not her morals.
I am not inclined to look for the second installment.

Doris Lessing has led such an interesting life, and writing a diary all the time. She writes of a time completely foreign to me, living a history of the changes in Southern Afica. I find her autobiography a great read, and prefer it to her novels. Interesting and moving, and explains much about her!

This is a hard-hitting piece of autobiography. Lessing looks at her parents and their world of colonial mastery from the point of view of her younger, increasingly disenchanted self. Lessing was gathering steam in those years, to emerge as one of the prominent novelists of the post-war era. In this, the first of a two-volume autobiography, she is beginning to grow critical of her parents, colonialism, white supremacy, men - her husband in particular - and just beginning to flirt for a short time with the great experiment in group-think of the period known as Communism. She falls for it for a time, but not for long. It will take her a while, but she finally emerges along with George Orwell as the most articulate critic of this mindless, toxic form of self-imposed mental slavery. She writes of her fellow-traveling, communist-sympathizing friends as silly people, which strikes me as as good a way to think of them as any. Lessing provides, along with her political autobiography, a lovely evocation of Africa, the landscape and people, about whom she wrote as a young novelist and to whom she has continued to refer throughout her long and continuing career as a writer.

This is a candid autobiography with as main themes love, sex (good sex, as Doris Lessing calls it, is a right for everybody) and politics in South-Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) ruled by a blank minority.
It is a gripping, moving and realistic picture, wherein the author tries to find answers to personal and more general human questions: why was she so outspoken rebellious and, on the contrary, so strictly loyal to the communist movement?
Why are people fighting relentlessly each other, and on the other hand, striving for happiness?
Are the people of her generation all children of World War I? Why was her father a freemason?

This book is written like an irresistible waterfall. Not to be missed.

Under My Skin

Doris Lessing's autobiography traces her political and emotional development from her earliest childhood memories to her growing, overwhelming, disenchantment with provincial (as she saw it) small town life. "Small town" life for her was pre-WWII Salisbury in the (then) British colony of Southern Rhodesia. Salisbury was a complacent capital city of 10,000 white settlers in a country the size of Spain.
Lessing is quick to debunk the myth of the prosperous, close knit, white farming community - poverty was a real fact of life both for blacks and whites. Her most vivid childhood memories are of escaping from the family home and off into the limitless veld. The emptiness of the veld parallels her youthful emptiness and her growing convictions that the communist party represents a real hope for the world.
The book, a masterpiece of autobiographical writing, is brutally honest in parts and wilfully obscure in others. Some of her emotional mistakes are hardly glanced at (leaving her first two children, for example) but others (the joys of being part of a fast, hard drinking sect, embracing radical politics) are wonderfully engaging. Reading her thoughts you could be forgiven for thinking that the "party" was the only opposition to conservative white rule in Salisbury. This is what makes her book so appealing, her supreme skill as a novelist allowing us to enter the heady world of rushed meetings, leftist newspaper deliveries, drinks on the sports club verandah and back in time to find the cook still waiting to prepare supper. Naturally it couldn't last and Lessing is far too intelligent to think that that is all there is to life. The book ends in 1949 as she arrives in London, apprehensive and hopeful in the capital city of her parents.
This is more than a `who-did-what' from a long time ago, times and dates are (probably deliberately) rarely mentioned. It is the personalities and the ideas - most of all the ideas - sliding from youthful enthusiasm to mature realism which fuse the book with life and vitality. `Under My Skin', published in 1992, is that rare thing, a candid autobiography written by a consummate novelist with skills to spare. Doris Lessing is a national treasure.

Without a doubt, the finest synthesis of Christian theology I have ever read. I have a library of tomes on theology, but this volume is in a class by itself. I have read it several times and continue to refer to it very frequently. It would be difficult to overemphasize how positively MacDonald's hopeful and joyous sermons have impacted my faith. If you want to enrich your faith, MacDonald's "Unspoken Sermons" would be at the top of my list of recommendations.

This book quite possibly saved my faith. I have never found a more beautiful, yet simultaneously intellectual and thought-provoking book. After reading this, I have been devouring any George MacDonald text I can lay my hands on, and in all of them, I find a picture of God that is beyond any other I have enountered. MacDonald seems to understand (or at least articulate) better than any other author I have discovered God's character, how God relates to us, and vice versa.

I find myself wanting to give examples of what I mean, but I don't believe any summary I could provide would do his thoughts justice. You'll just have to read the book! You will be amazed, enlightened, and filled with joy, faith, and perhaps relief that there is a deeper way to look at Christianity than we often find in Christian writing.

One specific note: The sermon titled "The Eloi," on Jesus' cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is perhaps the best single piece of writing I have ever read. No, not perhaps. It IS the best single piece of writing I have ever read. If you find yourself in the midst of the proverbial "dark night of the soul," and are not able to find God or feel his presence, I would make this first on your reading list.

Be blessed by this book. I have been.

I came to learn of this work through another author on the subject of God's inescapable love, and the author (a professor of philosophy) mentioned that this book had an immeasurable impact on his life. I saved my money and purchased the book over 5 years ago, and I have to admit that it is by far the most influential and treasured book I own. I have been a Christian for over 20 years, and I have gone through many highs and lows. This book (I'm sure through God's providence) came at a particularly dark time of my life when I began to doubt the underpinnings of what I had been taught as a conservative Bible Belt Protestant.

What I found through reading this book was a God who was better than I had ever thought, a God who was worthy to be worshipped and loved. For the first time, I realized that it was alright not to accept certain notions of God or theology(like that there is a list sins that are unpardonable) and that these ideas truly made no sense and were contradictory to God's nature.

Of all of the sermons, my absolute favorite is Justice. If there is a more profound explanation of God's justice and love, I have yet to see it. This should be a must-read for all Christians and has profoundly influenced my worldview.

Be blessed and encouraged by reading this book. I find myself reading it over and over with fresh insight each time.

George MacDonald's collection of sermons has profoundly influenced my spiritual life.

Buy this book. At first you might be intimidated by the paragraph-long run-on sentances and slightly antiquated language, but after reading a couple of sermons you'll grow accustomed (read: learn love) to his verbose yet eloquent style of writing. This collection of Christian writings will edify, challenge, and inspire you regardless of your doctrinal background or spiritual maturity.

Having worked my way through much of MacDonald's fiction and by recommendation of my son, I just recently purchased a copy of "Unspoken Sermons." Needless to say, this book will have a permanent place on my nightstand.
I wonder, has there ever been another man in history who thought as deeply about spiritual things as MacDonald did? I marvel at his ability to see into things. For example, in discussing the third recorded temptation of Christ (in the book of Matthew) in which the adversary offers rulership of the world if Christ will only bow down and worship him (satan), he notes:
"Could it be other than a temptation to think that he might, if he would, lay a righteous grasp upon the reins of government, leap into the chariot of power, and ride forth conquering and to conquer? Glad visions arose before him of the prisoner breaking jubilant from the cell of injustice; of the widow lifting up the bowed head before the devouring Pharisee; of weeping children bursting into shouts at the sound of the wheels of the chariot before which oppression and wrong shrunk and withered, behind which sprung the fir-tree instead of the thorn, and the myrtle instead of the brier. What glowing visions of holy vengeance, what rosy dreams of human blessedness--and all from his hand--would crowd such a brain as his!--not like the castles-in-the-air of the aspiring youth, for he builds at random, because he knows that he cannot realize; but consistent and harmonious as well as grand, because he knew them within his reach. Could he not, transfigured in his snowy garments, call aloud in the streets of Jerusalem, "Behold your King?" And the fierce warriors of his nation would start at the sound; the ploughshare would be beaten into the sword, and the pruning-hook into the spear; and the nation, rushing to his call ... Ah! but when were his garments white as snow? When, through them, glorifying them as it passed, did the light stream from his glorified body? Not when he looked to such a conquest; but when, on a mount like this, he 'spake of the decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem'! ... 'Thou shalt worship the Lord they God, and Him only shalt thou serve.' Not even thine own visions of love and truth, O Saviour of the world, shall be thy guides to thy goal, but the will of thy Father in heaven."
Although I have read of the temptations of Christ numerous times and heard sermons preached on the subject, NEVER had I thought or heard about what those temptations might have encompassed as MacDonald writes. True, we cannot know for certain just what thoughts Christ had in those temptations, but we do know that they were not insignificant. They were TESTS and as such MacDonald brings meat and bone to them and allows us to experience the depth of them. Yet, in these temptations, Christ chose the will of the Father; that is, he resisted his own desire and chose to be totally obedient to God's plan, step by step as it unfolded, perhaps not understanding the whys but always knowing obedience was his duty first and last.
This is the model and inspiration every Christian needs, and MacDonald brings these things to our understanding so that we can fully relate them to our own lives.
There is no author who has so positively impacted my life the way MacDonald has, and I am forever grateful for the person who first introduced me to his works. Get this book! Read it slowly and carefully and think about what you read as it relates to your own life. You will be forever changed.

This review is for this particular edition.

I love that the first three (and argueably best) books of the Vampire Chronicles were combined with sleek and well designed cover art. The cover was actually taken from the short-lived Broadway musical, 'Lestat', and this was made as an obvious merchandise tie in. It was nice to see, nonetheless.

It's of a much better quality than the mass market paperback versions and a better deal at $13, since each mass market edition will cost you about $7. The book itself is rather heavy (about 4 lbs), so if you have weak wrists it may be a struggle for you to hold, but text is large and easy to read, the ink does not smudge like the mass market editions do, and the pages are thin and smooth.

If you're contemplating 'plunging into the stream' (the words that the Vampire Lestat himself 'lives' by) by giving Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles a try, than buy this particular version. I can't recommend it enough.

Anne's collection is by far and wide the best I have ever read concerning vampires. Far from your run of the mill dime story vampire stories, these books will sweep you off your feet. Blending our love for vampires with a spiritual side that is to be highly commended, I have never been so impressed with a set of novels before. Dont stop with these either! Her next book, Memnoch the Devil is a triumph as well.

I got this book with only knowing about the moive Interview with the Vampire. When I started to read the book I couln't put it down. All 3 of the books are the same way. I like The Vampire Lestat the best. In The Vampire Lestat she goes more in to the history of vampire. Then with ending that will make you want to read The Queen of the Damned right away. The Vampire Chronicles is one of the best series out there. If you havn't read it you are missing out.

to be honest i have read all of annes published works dealing with both the vampires and the mayfair witches and i believe these three books (interview, lestat, and queen of the damned)were what made me keep my interest in them for as long as i have. it is her way of story telling which ensnares the imagination in us all. to be completely honest if you are going to read these three be prepared to be spending more money in a few months to buy the rest of the set.

sort of in response to a review posted prior. without getting into much detail it is expanded more on in her other books but the gist of it is that while akasha was undoubtedly the oldest and first of all vampires they centuries of her slumber made her weaker than mekhare (i believe that is the correct spelling and if not i dont have time to fix it). it is explained out that the longer a vampire stays awake and feeding the faster and greater their powers grow to be. in any event it is a work of fiction one doesnt need to over analyze it to enjoy the book for what it is.

Anne Rice revamped the vampire-horror genre with the publication of "Interview with the Vampire," a supernational drama from the vampire's own mouth. It became an unexpected hit, and spawned a series of sequels that came to be known as the Vampire Chronicles. The first three books of the series are compiled here, and arguably remain her best.

"Interview With the Vampire" is the story of Louis, a grieving young widower and plantation owner, whose life is turned upside down when he meets the charming vampire Lestat. Lestat offers him a way out: become a vampire. Louis accepts, but once it's done, he finds that vampirism is more than he bargained for -- especially for his conscience.

"The Vampire Lestat" takes a totally different tack, showing us the world through the enigmatic, charming Lestat's eyes. After years of dormancy, Lestat wakes up in time for the early MTV years of the 1980s, becoming a rock star in the tradition of Ozzy and Black Sabbath. And like Louis, Lestat relates his long life's story -- how he became a vampire, his wanderings over the earth, and his investigations into the origins of vampirism itself...

"Queen of the Damned" builds on that research. Lestat's metal music has caused quite a bit of mayhem -- but not this much before: Akasha, Egyptian queen and mother of all vampires, has reawoken from her comalike sleep. The lesser vampires are having strange dreams, some are being murdered by the ruthless queen. Apparently she wants to kill virtually all men. What is more, Akasha has taken a shine to the roguish Lestat himself...

Vampiric autobiography is a given in Anne Rice's bibliography -- she has plenty of bloodsuckers telling us about their lives. But Lestat and Louis's were not just the first ones, but perhaps the most compelling and rich, especially since the two had such radically different viewpoints -- including of one another. Is Lestat a heartless fiend, or a roguish good-craving bad boy? I'd lean towards the latter, to be honest.

The first two books are quite personal -- one is Louis recounting his own miserable life and un-life. Then we get Lestat, a radically different viewpoint, a guy who enjoys his un-life even more than his mortal existance. Finally, there's an epic view of all vampires, throughout history, from the ancient Egyptian queen to the modern biker vamps.

Despite the more controversial recent novels, Anne Rice's first Vampire Chronicles are often reckoned to be modern horror classics. Rich, intriguing and far deeper than you'd think vampire fiction would be.

No need to summarize the plot; others have already done so. This is another terrific novel by the author of "Morte D'Urban" and fans of that sadly-neglected work will find this one equally enjoyable.

Powers has a talent, rare in American literature, for subtlety. His portrayal of Joe Hackett, a somewhat aloof, well-meaning but complacent Catholic priest, is a masterpiece of nuance, as realistic a character study as any I've encountered. One wouldn't think a book about the everyday goings-on of a suburban clergyman (everything from fund-raising to attending retreats to petty diocesan politicking) would hold much interest for the lay-reader, but don't let the subject matter scare you: this is a book about faith, redemption, and the wins and losses faced by all of us as we grow older (and, purportedly, wiser).

J.F. Powers's characters are built incrementally, as much through what they say and do as by what they leave unsaid and undone. The dialog here is snappy, the plotting is swift, the humor is wonderfully dry (the first chapter alone is a quiet riot), the observations of human nature are acute. The writing is razor-sharp; not a wasted word or imprecise thought to be found. And this without the stylistic bells and whistles so many writers feel the need to employ in order to "prove" their literary merit. It's not often I say that I hated to see a book come to an end, but in this case, it was true. In many ways, the novel ends just as Hackett's life is beginning.

Keep Powers in print. Read this book.

This final entry--1988 marks its long-delayed arrival--in a lengthy career (starting in the mid-1940s) of scant fiction marks the end of the postwar, triumphalist, yet marginalized, Midwestern Catholic parish--and notably here, rectory--intrigues that Powers excelled at conveying. His scale, being so focused, gains accuracy and depth by its concentration upon detail. Like a model railroad set, the 1:150 (or whatever!) ratio means painstaking attention to fidelity. Such realism to the untutored eye appears grotesque or caricatured, but to an aware observer reveals a nearly exact fit of form with content.

I give it four rather than five stars as I have re-read (and reviewed here, "Morte" and the thirty stories in their original three volumes as well as the collected reissue) all of Powers recently, and I believe that his many strengths as a writer are at times clouded slightly by his tendency towards oversubtlety. A forgivable fault in an era of so many authors straining for the obvious or what critics call "overdetermining" their subject, but Powers tends in all his work towards lengthy passages where not much goes on at all, but in which an editor could have polished the presentation and refined the craft even further. Powers appears to have been his own worse enemy and his own most scrupulous critic, on the other hand. Be it as it may, Powers makes nearly all of his peers look hasty, scattered, and undisciplined by comparison.

Action over the course of a priest's youth, coming of age, and gradual rise from curate to administrative assistant (when that word did not connote a secretary or receptionist) and then pastor comprises the narrative. Less verve here than the worldlier, more urbane Fr Urban had, but perhaps in his principled if compromised (the whole crux of the tension) fidelity to the needs of separating "Church from Dreck" Powers reveals that the need for reform Fr Urban realized while Vatican II was still in session (so to speak) by the end of the decade became all the more apparent as the slow slide downhill accelerated. Set by its conclusion around 1968, if offhandedly, the Catholic Worker roots of Powers and his conservative radicalism stand his fictional main character in good stead as priests wander off, parishioners ignore crusty priests' reprimands, malls open on Sundays, the hillbilly's war machine thunders on in the small town press, and guitars with cant supplant chant.

This novel, like his earlier (sharing with it a clumsy if rarified referential title) "Morte d'Urban," (1962), suffers from arid stretches, where the humor is so deadpan, the pace so true that the inert nature of our own shared experience with the clerical protagonists appears too neatly aligned. Dullness enters. A VD quarantine warning takes up one and a half pages verbatim. A few sample sermons from Father Felix (who helps out saying weekend Masses) summarize the stultifying, yet sincere, homiletics of a certain, less soundbitten, age. So with Powers, who in this novel had been criticized as a man out of time, with figures he identified with whose era had passed them by. Joe is only in his mid-forties. He seems much older. This may be a sign of now-diminished respect, when the maturity demanded of authority figures gave an earned dignity and a bit of unearned noblesse oblige to the clergy in smaller towns where the collar still mattered. Joe Hackett manages to get through the routine, and out of the limelight that had once courted his counterpart Fr. Urban, this parish priest does his best balancing God with Mammon, as the demands of a new accounting system make fundraising all the more essential, even as this pulls at the Gospel admonition that it's better to give alms in secret. How to square this with the need to make accountable freeloading parishioners when the Archbishop's needs come payable on demand? Out of such quandaries, Powers raises his own quiet art.

The need in fiction for a jolt, a spark, a spin off from the quotidian to the profound nestles, certainly, in Powers. This, however, moves along leisurely, and often nothing seems to happen for chapters at a time. Then, you understand that this accurately limns the trajectory of a recognizably human life like our own. You can see Powers' study of Joyce in his preparation of the slow ascent to epiphanies, such as Fr. Joe Hackett's finessed blessing of a scruffy draft resister who steps to tie his shoelaces while the padre finagles praying over his head and out of eyesight or earshot as the young man prepares to flee to Canada, on the pastor's unspoken advice but according to his moral example.

Re-reading this nearly two decades after it appeared, I admire Powers' critique of not only the institutional Church and its compromises with the world, but of his own admission that holy Joes only go so far in their own zeal in battling for their losing side. They must do so, vowed to do so and called by their Maker, but Powers recognizes in his own mellowing how annoying piety and phariseeism can be for the rest of us. Not for nothing is an early battle Joe engages in at the seminary, much to the disgust of some classmates and the suspicion of his rector, over the necessity of wearing a hairshirt.

Constructed in part from stories written over the past (two of which appeared in the last of his three thin story collections, 1975's "Look How the Fish Live," the novel does let its seams show. I wonder if parts of this novel were left too long on the shelf, or in hibernation. Yet, this is how Powers wrote. Very slowly, spending days pondering if a character would use the term "pal" or "chum" in referring to a confrere. Such was his state of mind, and more power to him. Probably a patron saint of scrupulous writers, if he is canonized as he deserves! His friend and colleague Jon Hassler eulogized him as "a saint with a bad temper." Hassler notes how Powers could strain so long over a detail that a reader, even an informed one such as himself, might miss the very nuanced finesse.

The extended battle of the story that was "Bill" for Joe to learn his new curate's name appears tedious and unbelievable, a shaggy-dog tale after a few pages of the many devoted to this embarrassing and rather cryptic episode. The story earlier published as "Priestly Fellowship" enters the novel mostly unchanged, but again the dive into the post-Vatican II uproar appears muted, if perhaps less dated for its lack of topicality to specific changes so much as the persistent lack of clerical fidelity. Yet, as the novel lengthens, the episodes do build upon possibilities tucked into these two stories, and while they unfold in off-handed and perhaps overly-controlled fashion, they are truer to the texture of everyday life for being so controlled. Holiness comes, if at all, minutely slow. The lack of histrionics or forced symbolism remains despite the uneven pacing in his longer works Powers' greatest talent. Powers knew when and how indirect first-person voice carried his stories; his shift in and out of his protagonist's minds is at its best in the imagined reverie Joe lets himself into as he pitches in the yard with Bill to let off steam. As with Urban's similarly prosy--both exaggerated and ordinary-- temptation at Belleisle in "Morte," the priestly heroes let their deepest selves emerge when they pretend they are just like the rest of us. Powers, and we, know better.

A final word, quoted from one of his students in Commonweal on his death in 1999. In the novel, out of his collar on a much-needed vacation, Joe passes himself off at the hotel bar as working for a "big concern," in "life insurance." The firm? "Eternal." Sort of a multinational, he admits, although he works out of a local "branch office." Powers explained when asked in class why he wrote so much about the clergy, and if he was anticlerical. "I'm not anticlerical. I simply look for a story that elucidates truth. If a human being buys an insurance policy, that's not much of a story. But when a priest buys an insurance policy, there's something going on that needs to be said and I want to say it." It took him nearly fifty years to write it.

This book was nominated for the national book award in 1988 for fiction. It is the story about Father Joe Hackett who as a young man was an athlete and a bit of a partier, and then he became a priest out of saintly ambition but becomes overly fond of the drink. Joe is a strange hero for a novel. Powers' daughter Kathrine in her introduction to the current edition states: "Written over an increasingly dark time, Wheat That Springeth Green was shaped by my father's growing conviction of the progressive and irredeemable absurdity of things. He was a connoisseur of the dull, the mediocre and the second-rate, and of the disingenuous and fraudulent, but now it seemed that their dominion has truly come." This book captures much of that sentiment - Joe in his own life and in his interactions with most of the other clergy in this book. Though Powers is more famous for his earlier work Morte D'Urban, I personally find this book much more enjoyable and Joe, though he has more visible faults, a person you can relate to more easily. I have known priests in my life that were mirrors of both Joe and Urban and yet I end up seeing a lot of myself in Joe.

Joe desired to live a holy life; he wanted to be pious and devote. He desired to be a man of prayer, serving the world. In chapter 6 Out in the World (previously published as The Warm Sand) Joe, in his last year in seminary, became known as a holy roller and was avoided his last year in school. His first assignment is with a priest who is a truly pious man, and when he criticizes him in front of some other clergy he experiences great remorse. Through this event he tries to change his ways.

Personally I can really relate to Joe; there is much in his small successes and more frequent failures or setbacks. This book is excellent. It was a labour of over 25 years of writing and rewriting. And having read some of the earlier versions of some chapters published as short stories, it was worth the wait. Powers, being the wordsmith he is, crafted and recrafted the stories together into a fabulous novel.

Anyone who has not read J.F. Powers is missing a major American voice in letters. This review will not be adequate to even speak of his skill.

Complete lives are sketched with the faintest of references, such as a family who the hero, Father Joe Hackett, brings from the city to remind his comfy parishioners of the trials of the poor (shades of the "holy poverty in the city" mantra so common from my youth). He tells their entire story with three unconnected lines sprinkled as a leitmotif throughout the narrative.

The hero's interior monologue is both revealing, and surprising. Throughout the novel faint points of challenges and grace (and simple, just-sufficient grace) carry the reader along with Father Joe's eventual conversion (rededication?). This is the story of a bumbling soul who eventually inhales the breath of the Divine.

Every person I've ever given a J.F. Powers book to has thanked me (Catholics and non-Catholics alike). Highly recommended, for this is monumentally great literature.

The best of the series of books published by The New York Review of Books are all the works of J.F. Powers, who died in 1989. Powers' novels and stories are almost entirely concerned with Catholic clerical life in the midwest. I hadn't read his last novel, Wheat That Springeth Green, and I was happy to find that the new edition contained an introduction by the author's daughter, Katherine Powers. Wheat That Springeth Green is every bit as fine as Morte D'Urban, his first and only other novel written some 25 years earlier, and a National Book Award winner as well. In its treatment of character and plot the latter novel is theologically perhaps even more complex.

Joe's character is cast from the first pages: as a toddler he gets attention from his parents' friends merely for declaiming at a party "I go to church!" We also learn of his parents' antipathy towards the parish priest's intoning on the subject of the "Dollar-a-Sunday Club," an attitude that Joe will inherit, and which becomes a theme that will be played out in a number of surprising ways. We also sense something of his aloofness in these first chapters as well. He doesn't keep up with many friends, but he does seem to know the value in keeping up appearances: "Joe just smiled at Frances and everybody, so they couldn't tell how he really felt about being in the sack race..." Joe is a good athlete, even in grade school, and the race he really wants, but doesn't get, is the sprint.

Much of the story revolves around Joe's relation to money, so that even an early adventure (described in nearly pornographic detail) involving his first adult relations with women is later understood to be subsumed by his larger pecuniary obsessions. His sexual sins, or at least the memory of them, turn out to be something of a red herring: at the seminary he asks his instructor, "Father, how can we make sanctity as attractive as sex to the common man?" a question that (rightly) earns him nothing but mirth from his fellow seminarians. We are given hints that as Joe grows older he succeeds in overcoming his youthful scrupulosity. After a stint at Archdiocesan Charities he is assigned to the parish of St. Frances - a name shared by his childhood infatuation and a co-traveler in that youthful adventure. So as far as sex is concerned, there is in his maturity there a sense that all is right with Joe, if not the world. That this is the case is dramatically reinforced by the nearly hopeless entanglements of an ex-seminarian, some of which leads to misplaced retribution that Joe patiently, even faithfully endures. These episodes are magnificently structured, displaying in Joe's life a kind of fate that is worked out through choices made less in freedom than with a concern for propriety and in service to principles that are neither his own, nor of the church in which, as he says in other circumstances, he does so much hard time.

Other obstacles to holiness, as perhaps they always must, remain. Although his basic attitude is good, the reader realizes that the young Father Hackett has refused one halo in favor of another when he refuses to toady up to either the priest in his parish or to the archbishop in his archdiocese. Money matters are everywhere in evidence: the rectory built by Joe; bribes offered by parishoners; purses collected on behalf of retiring priests; inheritence; a collection drive that is farmed out to a private firm - in which Joe will take no part. All this points to beyond the contradiction in one man's character to a paradox that is funamental to our very being. How do we care for an abundance which is most fully ours when we least consider it our own?

Joe's misappropriation of his own nature, and indeed human nature, leads to a truly heinous transgression in one of the final chapters. That this transgression is committed and then resolved in secret, without comment from Joe or even the narrator, points toward a God who is as truly all merciful as he is unnoticed even by lesser beings working on his behalf. I would guess that the true thorn in Joe's side is also Powers', and while reading I several times wondered whether the crux of the story wasn't inspired by his frustration at watching baskets and plates passed through the pews, week in and week out, for a lifetime.

Very highly recommended.

I first read this book when I was 11 or 12, circa 1962.

It was so appealing that I adapted it into a play for a 7th grade book report. My teacher, the doughty Mrs. Kerrigan, took me to task for not reading a REAL play. I held my ground, however, and insisted that the dialogue and imagery made it as actable as any "play" could be.

Here I am, lifetimes later, still chuckling over this little masterpiece.

If you like Jean Shepherd's "Christmas Story", you will love this book!

Many times reading this book I related it to my own childhood in the 1980's. It's amazing to think that this was written in the 1950's, about the author's childhood in the 1930's. It's also hard to believe that such normalcy could have taken place in an era when we never hear about anything but misery. Unbelievable as well, is that happiness and life carried on without the direct interference of the New Deal. This book is truly a gem that will bring you back to the forts and treehouses we used to play in.

I'm sure that mothers and daughters will enjoy the book as well, but fathers and sons will get the most from it. I first read a borrowed copy of this book at age 10 back in the 1970s, and I loved it. Its praise of living leisurely, making your own fun, spending time with friends rather than parents, even doing nothing at all, seemed to validate my own boyhood lifestyle. I never forgot the book and finally bought it for myself from Amazon 30 years later.

The book is now more than 50 years old, yet it seems strikingly contemporary because the trends that Smith spotted in the 1950s (structuring children's playtime, always trying to teach and "improve" our kids, being a "pal" to our kids) have only accelerated since. Smith treats everything with nostalgia and humor, making every page a joy, if a tiny bit sad.

I now have a baby boy of my own, and I'm going to save my copy for him to read, years from now. I strongly recommend this book to young fathers, and fathers-to-be.

This book should never be out of print. A glorious, accurate dipiction of childhood from a boy's perspective. We can all relate. Sweet and innocent: when he talks about smoking "weed," it was real weeds from a back lot! When duct tape was the most valuable thing on the planet and an abandoned lot was a wonderland, it will all come back to you.

What a wonderful little book! Very short, only 124 pages, and I think the best word to describe it is - bemusing. I was charmed by the writer's account of his childhood in the Roaring Twenties. Written in 1957, so many of his observations on parenting (and he had two of his own) are certainly true today. We micro-and macro-manage our children. Are they ever left to their own devices any more? I do remember one of the things he did, running a needle under the skin of my finger. I have a note in my copy that says this book should be given to whichever of my children's children reaches 6 first.

I first read this book in 10th grade for a book report, and I loved it. I have read it a few times since. The theme of communication is wonderfully played out.

This book is one more proof of Herbert's mastery. The effort and difficulties in communication between a human and a being that perceives our dimension only as a "wave" is wonderfully laid out. The issue of communication between intelligent beings of different kinds (non-human) and cultures is one that Herbert plays a lot in his books, but in this one it was taken to another level.

I find the book so deep that only after the 5th reading I understood Herbert was trying to conjure a new way to look onto the creation of our universe from a VERY uncustom perspective. OK, so I read it 5 times, and I'm venturing into my 6th now. Willing to sell me your herbert collection, don;t hesitate to contact. :)

One of the best short stories I have read, Whipping Star is most memorable for Fanny-May, an extra-dimentional Caleban whose death will mean the end of life. I definitely recomend it for any lover of fiction

This was a clever book starring bureaucrats whose job is to intentionally derail governmental productivity and a sweet giant supernova named Caliban who just needs a little love. Together they must stop a wealthy & aristocratic S/M Mistress from destroying interstellar transportation. Reading this book will cause you to giggle like a madwoman.